American Buddhism as a Way of Life

Explores a range of Buddhist perspectives in a distinctly American context. The US seems to be becoming a Buddhist country. Celebrity converts, the popularity of the Dalai Lama, motifs in popular movies, and mala beads at the mall indicate an increasing inculcation of Buddhism into the American consciousness, even if a relatively small percentage of the population actually describe themselves as Buddhists. This book looks beyond the trendier manifestations of Buddhism in America to look at distinctly American Buddhist ways of life—ways of perceiving and understanding. John Whalen-Bridge and Gary Storhoff have organized this unique collection in accordance with the Buddhist concept of the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The Buddha section discusses the two key teachers who popularized Buddhism in America: Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki and the particular kinds of spirituality they proclaimed. The Dharma section deals with how Buddhism can enlighten current public debates and a consideration of our national past with explorations of bioethics, abortion, end-of-life decisions, and consciousness in late capitalism. The final section on the Sangha, or community of believers, discusses how Buddhist communities both formal and informal have affected American society with chapters on family life, Nisei Buddhists, gay liberation, and Zen gardens.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

In Memoriam, Roger Corless (1938–2007)

Meeting Roger some fifteen years ago at an Alcoholics Anonymous
meeting was the beginning of a major friendship. Little did I know
that he was such a highly respected scholar. However, as he would
remind me, he did Professor very well. Roger was born on Mercyside,
England in 1938, and was brought up in the Church of England, but ...

Foreword

“Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through
hell.” That’s how William Carlos Williams introduced American readers
to Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 volume, Howl and Other Poems.1 That
was an appropriate herald for Ginsberg’s poetic rant, but readers
of this collection of scholarly essays, American Buddhism as a Way of
Life, require a different sort of introduction. Few of you are wearing ...

Introduction: American Buddhism as a Way of Life

Because of the focus of media, celebrity converts, popular film, and
the popularity of the Dalai Lama, most Americans would find it difficult to overlook the prominence of Buddhism in American culture
today, even though fewer than 1 percent of Americans are Buddhists.1
It is clear that non-Western religions, especially Buddhism, are transforming
the American ...

Part I: Buddha: The Teacher as Immigrant

1 The Authenticity of Alan Watts

Alan Watts (1915–1973) was one of the most influential teachers of
Buddhism in mid-twentieth-century America, although he was neither
a Buddhist nor, to his own way of thinking, a teacher. Whatever
he became, he made his way by evading conventional categories.
Early on, as a student at a highly conventional English preparatory
school, he distinguished himself by declaring himself a Buddhist. ...

Perhaps no single individual has had greater influence on the introduction
of an Asian religious tradition in America than Daisetz Teitaro
Suzuki, the Japanese Buddhist scholar whose very long life spanned
the period from the early years of Japan’s Meiji Restoration through
the American counterculture of the 1960s. Almost single-handedly, he
made Zen Buddhism, previously unknown to Americans, a focus of ...

3 My Lunch with Mihoko

Allen Ginsberg lay in a coma, dying. An oxygen tube laced across
his nose as he tossed and turned against his portable hospital bed.
Sitting beside him that early April night, I held his cool, surprisingly
delicate hand and meditated with him despite his coma. I breathed in,
and he breathed in, then breathed out. Both of us became one breath
of bare attention. Suddenly, as if distracted by a thought, he tossed ...

Part II: Dharma: Doctrine, Belief, and
Practice in America

4 What Can Buddhist No-Self Contribute to North American Bioethics?

How can the Buddhist teaching of no-self contribute to a field that
presumes the existence of an independent, unique, and private individual?
North American bioethics and its manifestations, particularly
in the United States, assume without question that each one of us is
a self, a unique person, a moral agent. This individual moral agency
is the fundamental starting point for self-determination, autonomy. ...

5 A Contemporary North American Buddhist Discussion of Abortion

In current North American discourse, abortion certainly is a contentious
topic. Elections are decided by candidates’ stands on abortion,
and one of the most feared developments in United States’ law is overturning
the Supreme Court decision that legitimatized abortion, which
many fear could happen with new Supreme Court justices. Despite the
importance of this issue, it is only rarely discussed in North American ...

6 Touched by Suffering

The awareness of our human suffering—either through empathic realization
of others’ suffering, or the painful experience in one’s own life
is motivation for both philosophy and activism, for contemplation
and engagement. In my own work, as someone interested in both
philosophy and community work, I began my philosophic studies
looking at the interaction between philosophy and activism. ...

7 Identity Theft

This essay will look at how contemporary American life might affect
the understanding and practice of Buddhism. It has become a commonplace
that in less than fifty years, beginning with the interest in
Asian religions among the 1960s counterculture and the increase in
Asian immigrants because of relaxed immigration rules, Buddhism
has been adapting to American culture, and the debate has been ...

Part III: Sangha: Who Is an American Buddhist?

8 Family Life and Spiritual Kinship in American Buddhist Communities

One of the most quoted summary phrases concerning Buddhism’s
growth in countries beyond its Indian birthplace is Michael Carrithers’s
remark: “No Buddhism without the Sangha and no Sangha
without the Discipline.”1 For Carrithers, Buddhism’s growth and survival
in countries beyond India required and was predicated upon the
establishment of the sangha, and its implementation, as the basis for ...

9 Buddha Loves Me This I Know

In the fall of 1939 two very interesting things happened to Tatsue
Fujita, a Nisei1 honor student at the University of Hawai’i. A talented
and exceptionally bright young woman with a reputation as a particularly
strong Buddhist, Tatsue won an essay contest sponsored by
the Territorial Young Buddhist Association. The contest was meant
to “stimulate interest in Buddhism” among young Nisei Buddhists. ...

10 Analogue Consciousness Isn’t Just for Faeries

Buddhism and Christianity, although poles apart in their understanding
of what is ultimately real, propose structurally similar ways of
resolving the perceived division between the universal (or absolute)
and the particular (or relative).1 Both traditions profess a view of reality
that is ultimately nondual, but in practice both are frequently dualistic,
displaying world-denying features, opposing the body to the ...

11 “A Dharma of Place”

Enthusiasts of Japanese Zen gardens are used to juggling terms like
wabi-sabi and yugen.1 But how often do they find themselves talking
about the use of red bricks to evoke a fl owing stream, or contemplating
an abstract Buddha figure made out of cement fondue? Such
unusual approaches must be taken in investigating the Rochester Zen
Center’s Japanese-influenced garden, where Asian and North American ...

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